Hardware

The Beauty of Being Hardware Agnostic

We can all agree that virtualization has numerous benefits. One of the obvious benefits is that virtualization makes systems hardware agnostic. This is one of my favorite features of going virtual. I am responsible for the network operations of many businesses and being able to forget about hardware compatibilities on the OS level is a major advantage.

We experienced the benefits of this ourselves today while upgrading one of our servers. We added additional RAM and changed CPUs. The memory was no surprise, it is rarely an issue. When it is, it is a hardware issue not an OS one. CPU swaps are generally more complex. I have seen many Windows systems become unstable after increasing or decreasing the number of processors/cores.

So when we got the chance to upgrade one of our ESXi servers from two dual core processors over to two quad cores we had to test it. In true anticlimactic fashion everything worked perfectly. The VMware server booted flawlessly and now shows the additional cores and RAM.

So if you can get your hands on upgrade parts or new servers all together, go for it!

*Update* We have since bumped the server up to 32GB of RAM, great stuff. We plan to upgrade the CPU’s again in the near future. It just keeps getting better.

–Himuraken

VMware View Launch Tour

Woke up nice and early this morning in lovely Tampa, FL for the VMware View Launch Tour. I have been playing around with various virtual technologies for quite awhile now. What I haven’t used at all is any form of VDI or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. In my ever evolving quest to learn all that I can, I signed up for the View Launch Tour so that I could learn more. The event was informative overall, even though the presentations from VMware and Dell contained the usual sales pitches. VMware focused on View, ThinApp, and related technologies while Dell gave a full demo of the Dell EqualLogic SAN. This is the third or fourth time that I have seen a demo on the Equal Logic and I am always impressed with the simplicity of the system. Anyways, desktop virtualization is a rapidly expanding sector in the virtual world and is well worth a look.

You can find additional information on the tour here: VMware View Launch Tour

–himuraken

Android Apps You Need

I am still buzzing with joy over my recent Android phone purchase. The Android Marketplace has proven very useful, I have found many useful apps and wanted to share a few worth trying out.

1. Listen – This Google app is a must have if you listen to podcasts. Forget the old days of downloading them and syncing them to your mobile/DAP. With Listen, you subscribe, download, and stream right from your phone.

2. Seesmic – This great little app is for those Twitter users on the go. After installing and logging into my account, I was able to perform all of the tasks that I expect from a Twitter client. Simple and intuitive.

3. NewsRob – If you are a Google Reader user you probably are familiar with using GR from your mobile browser. It isn’t any fun. NewsRob is simple, fast, and free. With numerous options for reading and syncing, this app is great.

4. Advanced Task Killer Free – The name is pretty self explanitory, it kills running processes. This is especially useful on the Android operating system which seems to leave everything running in the background even though you think that you exited.

5. TorrentFu – This app is excellent for controlling Transmission and other torrent clients. Uploading, starting, pausing, and all the other basic controls are available. A neat feature is the ability to search for torrents right from the phone and submit them to any of your configured profiles for downloading. There is also a built-in barcode scanner which converts barcodes into torrent searches. Perfect for those times in the movie/music aisle.

6. Katawa – Web comics! If you are a fan of XKCD, Indexed, Dinosaur Comics, and the like, this app is for you. It pulls the latest strip on demand.

There are many others… far to many to list actually. Anyways, I hope that this short list helps out new Android users.

–himuraken

User Pending Deletion in BES/BPS

Ran into this one today… Client’s BlackBerry Professional server 1 user license and I had to remove the user from the configuration. After several minutes I attempted to add the user back in and was told that I was out of licenses. The status page showed that a total of one user(s) was configured, while the user page showed zero. I restarted all services and attempted a few other things before running into the following commands which worked immediately.

1. Open a command prompt on the BES/BPS database server and run osql -E

2. Next, enter the following commands one line at a time, pressing enter after each command:
-a. use BESMgmt
-b. select DisplayName from UserConfig
-c. go

3. You should get a name(returned) by the database.
-a. use BESMgmt
-b. delete from UserConfig where DisplayName="name-to-remove"
-c. go

You can now open or refresh the BlackBerry Manager and check the number of licensed users which will not be minus one.

–Himuraken

Blackberry Professional SRP Status Not Connected

Happy New Year! Just dropping a quick one in case anyone has run into this simple issue.

I recently installed Blackberry Professional Server / Blackberry Enterprise Server on a new system for a client of mine and everything went well but for one exception. Upon opening the Blackberry Manager and checking the status I noticed that the SRP Status was “Not Connected”. A quick check of my firewall showed blocked connections originating from the BPS/BES server on TCP port 3101. After creating an allow rule for that port outbound, I restarted the Blackberry services and everything is working properly.

–Himuraken

3ware 9650se and ESXi 4.0

Of course the first thing that I did tonight after receiving my 3ware 9650se was to install it in my ESXi 4.0 server and get it going. There are a few caveats that I expected and a few that I didn’t. Hopefully this post will help a few of you out there.

Here are the steps that I performed:
1. Physically installed card and drives.
2. Built the logical unit / volume on the card.
3. Booted ESXi and noticed the card / array not showing up.

I expected #3 from my pre-sales madness research, yeah I’m that bad about pre-sales. There is a driver for ESX 4 that enables the hypervisor to be installed onto the array. For the rest of us with ESXi 4.0 however, the array can only be used as a datastore. This isn’t an issue anyways since the critical files are on the array not the single disk or USB device that we install the ESXi OS onto.

This led me to 3ware’s support site to find the exact article regarding this. You can find the article titled “I need support for VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0 and ESX/ESXi 4.0 update 1 for 9650SE and 9690SA. Is a certified driver available?” here. Basically, the top half of the document applies to ESX while the lower portion is dedicated to ESXi.

First off, the fact that 3ware has this and other great articles is excellent, they seem like the “get it”. On the other hand I found something difficult to do, and not for technical reasons. They instruct you to find the file “offline-bundle.zip” on the included driver CD. I searched all over the provided driver CD and had no luck locating it; I couldn’t help but think that there ought to have been a download link as well***. After locating the file I proceeded down the list of the well written how-to. Unfortunately for me, after running the perl vihostupdate.pl -server x.x.x.x -username root -password "" -b c:\offline-bundle.zip -i command I received zero feedback from the CLI. I restarted the ESXi server per the documents recommendations and upon reboot, no RAID array. Hrmm, I didn’t get any errors or feedback. After shorting the name of the original file to offline-bundle.zip and re-running the command, I did get positive feedback in the form of this message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective. Delicious! Now were are working the way we ought to. Restart the ESXi server and enjoy.

*** – Clarification and special note: At the bottom of the page you will see a download link for a file named: vmware-esx-drivers-scsi-3w-9xxx_400.2.26.08.035vm40-1.0.4.00000.179560.iso.. This ISO image contains the offline-bundle folder. The file that you need for the upgrade/upload is named: AMCC_2.26.08.035vm40-offline_bundle-179560.zip. The process would not succeed until I renamed AMCC_2.26.08.035vm40-offline_bundle-179560.zip to offline-bundle.zip.

Happy virtualizing!

–Himuraken

3ware 9650se & HP Mini 311 on the way!

Looks like Christmas is coming a little but early this year in the RighteousHack household. I just ordered a new netbook for my significant other. After much research and being thoroughly disappointed by Dell’s “new” offerings, we decided to look at HP. From the looks of things that I found on the HP Mini 311 in text and live video on YouTube, it seems like the little netbook with Nvidia ION graphics will be a solid performer considering that its a netbook. Better yet, the system runs DDR3 and the Intel N280 chip so it should be as fast or faster than most netbooks out there.

Next up in my ever increasing list of hardware is the 3ware 9650se PCI-E RAID controller. I have a need for a modern / high performing RAID card that won’t totally break the budget. This card will be used as a datastore only solution for my ESXi 4.0 server. All of the reviews led to two cards: 3ware 9650se and the Areca 1210. I have had more experience with Areca controllers than 3ware, but the reviews and ESXi compatibility issues pushed me towards 3ware. In addition to the tech stuff, 3ware support is reportedly awesome whereas Areca’s is nowhere to be found.

–Himuraken